The Best Letters of Charles Lamb eBook

to some advantage, seeing that it was my own trade
in a manner. But I was stopped by a round assertion
that no good poetry had appeared since Dr. Johnson’s
time. It seems the Doctor had suppressed many
hopeful geniuses that way by the severity of his critical
strictures in his “Lives of the Poets.”
I here ventured to question the fact, and was beginning
to appeal to names; but I was assured “it
was certainly the case.” Then we discussed
Miss More’s book on education, which I had never
read. It seems Dr. Gregory, another of Miss Bengey’s
friends, has found fault with one of Miss More’s
metaphors. Miss More has been at some pains to
vindicate herself,—­in the opinion of Miss
Bengey, not without success. It seems the Doctor
is invariably against the use of broken or mixed metaphor,
which he reprobates against the authority of Shakspeare
himself. We next discussed the question whether
Pope was a poet. I find Dr. Gregory is of opinion
he was not, though Miss Seward does not at all concur
with him in this. We then sat upon the comparative
merits of the ten translations of “Pizarro,”
and Miss Bengey, or Benje, advised Mary to take two
of them home; she thought it might afford her some
pleasure to compare them verbatim; which we
declined. It being now nine o’clock, wine
and macaroons were again served round, and we parted,
with a promise to go again next week, and meet the
Miss Porters, who, it seems, have heard much of Mr.
Coleridge, and wish to meet us, because we are
his friends. I have been preparing for
the occasion. I crowd cotton in my ears.
I read all the reviews and magazines of the past month
against the dreadful meeting, and I hope by these
means to cut a tolerable second-rate figure.

Pray let us have no more complaints about shadows.
We are in a fair way, through you, to surfeit
sick upon them.

XXXIV.

TO WORDSWORTH.

January, 1801.

Thanks for your letter and present. I had already
borrowed your second volume. [1] What pleases one
most is “The Song of Lucy.”. Simon’s
sickly Daughter, in “The Sexton,”
made me cry. Next to these are the description
of these continuous echoes in the story of “Joanna’s
Laugh,” where the mountains and all the scenery
absolutely seem alive; and that fine Shakspearian
character of the “happy man” in the “Brothers,”—­

“That
creeps about the fields,
Following his fancies by the hour, to
bring
Tears down his cheek, or solitary smiles
Into his face, until the setting sun
Write Fool upon his forehead!”